Assassin’s Creed Shadows is just a day away from release on Thursday, March 20, and while reviews that have come in are pretty solid, I’m probably the most curious to see how a number of features work in practice.
One of those is “Canon Mode,” a system in Assassin’s Creed Shadows that takes away moments of player choice and chooses to just put forth a set narrative that Ubisoft will consider the official canon story going forward as the series progresses.
I’m debating what I think about this, but I…sort of like it? I do understand the questions it raises. If there is a Canon Mode indicating the “right” choices, why have choices at all? It may also suggest the choices that do exist are not all that meaningful if Ubisoft does not actually want them to be the “real” results of the story.
My guess is that this mode exists because of a game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, where you had to choose between siblings Kassandra and Alexios, making one the hero and the other the villain of the story. But eventually, Ubisoft had to confirm that one character was “canon,” Kassandra, as she started showing up in other games, reprising her Assassin role.
Odyssey
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We are also seeing how this is going to play out with the upcoming Mass Effect 5, as the end of Mass Effect 3, the last time we were in that galaxy, offered ending choices that would dramatically transform the world in one way or another going forward, and one will have to be chosen as canon. Similarly, BioWare has indicated “FemShep” is the canon Shepard there. That said, would you want choices taken away completely in a game like Mass Effect? I’d say definitely not. But Assassin’s Creed? I don’t really have a problem with that as it doesn’t really even seem like that type of game, but both modes exist anyway.
There are of course plenty of examples of games with extremely strong narratives that don’t offer any choices at all. For instance, I think it would have far less impact if at the end of say, The Last of Us, you get to choose whether Joel sacrifices Ellie for a cure or rescues her with a shootout. That would…not be good, and destroy the whole concept of the sequel without yes, a Canon Mode. In most games that idea shouldn’t need to exist in the first place.
I don’t know if I’ll use it in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This series is not a game that I particularly care to make a bunch of decisions in, as I’d probably rather just see the “real” narrative, like how Odyssey probably should have been. Ironically, this is creating a choice about a mode that takes away choice. But I don’t know, I’m still debating it. What will you do?
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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